Teaching Life

      I have been struggling with loss for months…dropped into this place by a powerful emotional response to the end of my working life as an educator. When I was nineteen, I got a summer job as a teacher, working in the Headstart Program with children of the Mexican migrant population whose parents worked locally and in the fields of the farming community where I grew up. I completed my coursework, and began the difficult task of actually learning to teach, creating the balance between compassion and power, absorbing the curriculum, figuring out how to create interesting lessons which addressed the intelligence and experience of each child, working to help children feel empowered in their relationships with one another, creating relationships with the parents of my students, accepting the politics and struggles of the institution, whether private or public…renewing my energies each summer, and bringing my whole self to the work, year after year. When I left St. Stephen Catholic School in 1984, where I had spent 6 years teaching, I was hired at Duniway Elementary School and spent 28 years teaching there. Although I have been “retired” for a few years, I continued to work one day a week, as a teacher in first grade or as a literacy specialist. This kept me connected to the school and community of which I had been a part; the faculty, the children, the buildings, the grounds, the path to and from the neighborhood and school. Returning year after year, cultivating and refining the myriad skills relevant to classroom life. This fall the connection ended.

I was not aware of the depth of my identification—how fulfilled by the sense of dedication, nurtured by the responsibility and deep sense of purpose…the honor of making, what has felt like, such a simple, meaningful contribution…helping children learn and grow.  I certainly did not expect the waves of loss. Now I turn toward the challenge and opportunity of reinventing self. Great joy and possibility!